Police will be restricting access to Ottawa’s downtown core this week ahead of planned freedom events for the arrival of Canadian Armed Forces Veteran James Topp and Canada Day.
The City of Ottawa announced a “motor vehicle control zone” limiting access to downtown – it will be in effect from Jun. 29 at 8:00 a.m. ET until Jul. 4. at 6:00 a.m ET.
ICYMI: There will be Canada Day traffic impacts across the city.
The exclusion zone will border Booth Street in the west, Laurier Avenue in the south, Colonel By Drive and Sussex Drive in the east and Wellington Street in the north.
Only residential and business traffic will be given access to the control zone, along with pedestrians, cyclists and public transit buses.
Meanwhile, vehicles that are “taking part in any form of demonstration, event, protest or rally” will be banned.
The city is also prohibiting street parking and stopping inside the control zone, and said that non-compliance will result in fines and towed vehicles. Police will be setting up checkpoints to restrict access to the control zone. Barricades and heavy equipment will also be used.
“There are not going to be warnings or second chances. If the law is broken, regardless of who breaks it, there will be consequences,” said Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson at a Monday morning press conference.
In addition to limiting access to downtown, the City of Ottawa will be closing some roads on Canada Day.
“Getting around downtown on Canada Day will be more complicated than usual this year,” said Watson, adding that people are encouraged to “plan ahead and to expect delays.”
I asked Veteran James Topp (@CanadaMarches) today on Parliament Hill if he thinks everything has gone well so far. Another journalist asked if he thought the original #FreedomConvoy was a protest “without dignity”. #cdnpolipic.twitter.com/tSPDLsgYkv
Ottawa Police are also calling in backup from other municipal police forces as well as the RCMP.
“We are prepared to take decisive and lawful action to deal with threats, occupation attempts and other unlawful behaviour that we observe,” said Interim Police Chief Steve Bell, adding that police “have authorities to enter public and private property on behalf of the property owner to remove anyone attempting to occupy or set up structures.”
James Topp is set to arrive at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Thursday, Jun. 30 at 6:00 p.m. ET. Freedom events on Canada Day will take place downtown beginning 9:00a.m ET and ending at 8:00p.m. ET.
In an interview on CTV’s Question Period with Evan Solomon, Conservative interim leader Candice Bergen challenged the legacy media’s claims about the Freedom Convoy.
Over the weekend, Bergen called assertions that the Freedom Convoy was intending to overthrow the government misinformation and a distraction from the Trudeau government’s demonization of unvaccinated Canadians.
Conservative interim leader @CandiceBergenMP is asked about Conservative MPs supporting the Freedom Convoy. She says Conservatives believe convoy protesters deserve to be heard. #cdnpolipic.twitter.com/gOSP0ia54p
“We very much support Canadians who were and still are against the mandatory vaccines. We don’t believe that they should be wedged, called names, stigmatized. We don’t think they should be set aside. Our job is to listen to Canadians. We don’t always have to agree with what they’re talking about. We don’t agree with everything that they want to do,” said Bergen.
“The people who protested here in Ottawa were there as you know hundreds and thousands of them. They were upset, they wanted to be heard and we as Conservatives believe that they deserve to be heard and we wanted the prime minister to listen.”
During the interview, Bergen also reiterated her call for Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino’s resignation after misleading Canadians by claiming that law enforcement requested that the Liberals invoke the Emergencies Act to quash the peaceful demonstrators.
“He used it as his argument more times than I think we can even recall,” said Bergen. “This was one of their main arguments: police were asking for it. We now found out that is not true. That’s not the only area where he misled. He said that foreign funding funded the protest. That wasn’t true. They made accusations against the protesters that they set fires in apartment building in Ottawa. That was not true.”
Several key claims made by the Liberal government to justify their use of unprecedented emergency powers have since been debunked in official testimonies.
In a recent memo by Public Safety Canada, the department’s own director-general of its central operation centre for the convoy stated that there was no violence and convoy organizers were being respectful.
“No violence took place in the National Capital Region despite national protest for a wide variety of causes,” the memo stated. “Overall assessment: The majority of the event was peaceful. Since most government employees are working remotely, the disruption to government activities is so far minor.”
Dr. Leslyn Lewis is vying to lead the Conservative Party of Canada and become the next prime minister. She is also the only pro-life candidate vying for the leadership.
True North’s Elie Cantin-Nantel attended a campaign event Lewis held at Ottawa’s Greenbelt Church and asked attendees why they were supporting her. He also asked them what conservatives can do differently to win the next election and if they think it is possible for the party to win with a pro-life platform and leader.
True North also interviewed Lewis to find out what her vision of the Conservative party is.
A True North online survey of 5,228 Canadians who identified themselves as Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) members found that leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre was the first choice to become leader.
In total, 6,394 people responded to the web survey which was open www.tnc.news for two weeks from Jun. 8 to Jun. 22.
Results show that among active members, Poilievre had the overwhelming lead on the first ballot with 78.5% of the vote. Poilievre was followed by fellow MP Leslyn Lewis who scored in at 11.8% and then Roman Baber who received 8.7%
Of those polled, 0.7% picked Jean Charest on their first ballot, 0.2% picked Scott Aitchison and 0.1% picked Patrick Brown.
The poll first asked respondents to identify whether or not they were current and active members of the CPC. Then those polled were asked to rank their first and second choice on their ballots.
On the second ballot, 36% chose “no second choice” with 1,903 respondents leaving their second leadership option blank. The remaining votes were largely split between Lewis and Baber who netted 24.4% and 21.4% of the votes respectively.
Out of the 1,166 respondents who said they were not members of the CPC, results were similar but with a few exceptions.
While still achieving a majority, Poilievre didn’t fare as well among non-CPC members by a few percentage points, winning with 71.3%.
Among non-CPC members, Baber beat Lewis as their first ballot choice while also both having greater percentage of votes compared to results from party members. In total, Baber was the first ballot choice for 14.1% of respondents while Lewis netted 12.3% of the votes.
Meanwhile, Charest’s support among non-CPC members doubled to 1.4%. Aitchison and Brown received 0.4% and 0.3% respectively.
Responses to the survey were solicited on the True North website and via social media and the results are not meant to be interpreted as a scientific random sample of the population.
In his first interview with True North since launching his Conservative leadership bid, Brampton mayor Patrick Brown joined Andrew Lawton for a wide-ranging discussion about his campaign, the Conservative party, and Canadian politics. In this interview, Brown addresses social conservatism, free speech, the Conservative path to victory, and more.
In the Conservative Leadership Series, True North’s Andrew Lawton sits down with leadership candidates for in-depth, one-on-one interviews.
Aaron Kimberly is a transsexual man and a mental health nurse who’s worked with gender dysphoric youth. He co-founded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance, which seeks to facilitate a more evidence-based, less ideological conversation about gender dysphoria.
The following op-ed is based on Aaron’s own lived experiences and some of the theories discussed were developed based on his experience working as a mental health nurse and as a transexual man.
When I was a little girl, from as early as age 3, I looked to boys and men as role models for social behaviour. At age 6, I’d stand on a stool at the bathroom mirror with my dad’s old toy shaving set to practice shaving my imaginary beard. In childhood social play, I was always male characters, like Luke Skywalker. Many people thought I was a boy, so I was accidentally placed on a boys’ baseball team for a season — which I thought was great.
But it was distressing too because no one understood my behaviour — including me. I had the deep sense that I was in the wrong category, which I realize now was gender dysphoria.
You would think that today’s gender revolution would make things easier on kids like me, who are now often identified as trans. In fact, I did transition when I was 33 and, though it did help me feel more congruent, that decision was largely based on misinformation.
I would not have benefited from the kind of ideology that many kids are being taught today: that trans is a separate type of personhood, and that my experience means that I’m literally the opposite sex; that I have a mysterious “gendered soul” that was born in the wrong body; or that biological sex is a “colonial construction” that doesn’t really exist. Though I did prefer to be “one of the boys,” figuratively speaking, I would have felt very uncomfortable using the boys’ locker room. I would have still used a private bathroom.
What I would have benefited from is understanding the truth about myself and the creation of space to be myself — truths that have largely been erased by the viciousness of today’s gender debates.
Some gay and lesbian people like me experience a psychological phenomenon that I think is best described as “opposite-sex social mirroring.” This isn’t a clinical term, but a descriptive one I use to help people understand my experience. That is, I took on the social behaviours (e.g. mannerisms, speech patterns) and roles associated with the opposite sex; extreme gender nonconformity is often associated with later same-sex attraction, although I didn’t know that then. As a young adult, I eventually found the butch/femme lesbian subculture in which many butches had male names and were referred to by male pronouns. But none of us were confused about which biological sex we were, or insisting that we were actually men, or that trans women were women.
Not all gay and lesbian people experience this kind of “opposite-sex social mirroring”, and not all people who experience this mirroring chose to transition. There are different kinds of homosexuality, with different developmental pathways, and different degrees of intensity of the phenomenon. Clinicians like me have increasingly noticed a correlation between female to male transsexualism and autism, some types of intersex conditions, and gynecological problems like Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome. What’s common to all of those conditions is testosterone.
Gay and lesbian “opposite-sex social mirroring” makes a lot of people uncomfortable, including many gay and lesbian people. For decades, radical feminist lesbians have beenbrutally critical of butch/femme culture, insisting that we are sellouts to “The Patriarchy” and just mimicking repressive stereotypes because we hate ourselves.
They refused, and many still do refuse, to accept that this is a type of homosexuality that exists across cultures. It has nothing to do with hating women. If all women had short hair and wore pants and all men had long hair and wore dresses, butches would have loved wearing dresses. We would have still mirrored the opposite sex and have more masculine behaviours and interests. It’s not about hair and clothing.
Sexual orientation is much more complicated and multi-dimensional than who we’re attracted to. It also influences social behaviour, occupational interests, bonding, and self-concept. Decades of research by sexologists like Dr. Ray Blanchard and Dr. Paul Vasey are very illuminating on these matters.
Within Dr. Blanchard’s typology, I am a “homosexual transsexual”, meaning, that I’m of a subset of gay/lesbian people who experience this type of Gender Dysphoria and chose to masculinize or feminize our appearance because of it. The sexology description of the relationship between homosexuality and opposite-sex social mirroring fits my experience exceptionally well and understanding this has vastly reduced my gender dysphoria — perhaps even more than physical transition did. And I wish I’d been told about it when I first sought help for gender dysphoria and advice about medical transition.
One reason I didn’t is that some trans women and other activists object to this research, asserting it’s rooted in “transphobia” or clinically deficient in some way and that it shouldn’t be used, and they’vewaged campaigns to discredit those who conducted this research. But doing so has made it harder for people like me to understand myself — this is vital research that must continue to be shared.
Instead of being honest about the connection between sexuality and gender dysphoria, we’ve come up with a language of liberation that confuses the reality: 78 genders, each with its own neo-pronoun. Biological sex as a construct of “white colonizers.” Trans men are men. Everyone has a “gender identity,” or mysterious “gendered soul.” That’s not the truth.
Rather, it’s a series of politically motivated academic ideas about gender as a performance, and the “queering” of categories, that has obscured the truth and the important research about gender dysphoria.
Gender is now a political movement, one that hasn’t helped people like me. Those ideas made my gender dysphoria worse.
If young kids exhibit intense opposite-sex social mirroring, they’re probably gay and are expressing a natural gay trait. Eleven studies to date show that 60-90% of kids with gender dysphoria resolve it by adolescence. There’s no need to steep them in Queer Theory or tell them they have the brain of one sex and the body of another. Just love them and leave them alone. Create space for them to be themselves.
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Aaron Kimberly is a transsexual man and a mental health nurse who’s worked with gender dysphoric youth. He co-founded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance, which seeks to facilitate a more evidence-based, less ideological conversation about gender dysphoria.
Another application launched by the Trudeau government tracked the location of nearly one million Canadians.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the Department of Environment admitted in a recent Inquiry of Ministry that the WeatherCAN application collected personal information of Canadians – including locations and email addresses of users.
“All personal information created, held or collected via this app by the department is protected under the Privacy Act,” wrote staff.
“The ‘current location’ function on this app enables the app to provide weather information based on the current Global Positioning System location of your mobile device.”
Oh yes!! #WeatherCAN app is available for download!
Now I can obsess over the super cool radar feature and figure out the likelihood of getting home to snowy Ottawa tonight to see my kids! ❄️
When the application was launched, former environment minister Catherine McKenna encouraged Canadians to download the application on Twitter.
“Oh yes!! (WeatherCAN) app is available for download! Now I can obsess over the super cool radar feature and figure out the likelihood of getting home to snowy Ottawa tonight to see my kids! Check it out!” tweeted McKenna.
The federal government has said that the application complied with privacy laws and requested access from users upon launch.
“Access is requested upon launch and achieved only if granted by the user,” the inquiry stated.
“The number of monthly active users is 628,615 to June 1 and the number of inactive users in the last thirty days is 87,176 giving a total number of devices tracked of 715,791.”
Collected information was stored by the Department of Environment for the “purpose of identifying the mobile device geo-location.”
Other data collected included the model of phone, app version, email address and any other information inputted into the program.
Earlier this year, the House of Commons voted to end a secretive Public Health Agency of Canada surveillance program after it was revealed that the agency tracked the location of 33 million devices.
The program has since been forwarded to Canada’s privacy commissioner for auditing and to find out if Canadians’ rights were violated.
The Trudeau government is alleged to have attempted to politically interfere in the RCMP’s investigation of the Nova Scotia mass shooting.
Notes by RCMP officers responding to the shooting claim Commissioner Brenda Lucki made a promise to Liberal Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and the Prime Minister’s Office to use the mass shooting towards implementing Trudeau’s gun control agenda.
Anthony Furey explains why Trudeau’s latest scandal is very problematic.
The Trudeau government billed taxpayers $3.1 million in federal salaries to plan Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s commitment to plant two billion trees by 2030.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, an Inquiry of Ministrytabled in the House of Commons shows that no trees were planted despite the hefty consultation fees.
“The department did not spend any funding to plant trees directly. Rather the department supports organizations planting trees with funding through grants,” wrote Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.
We’ll plant 2 billion trees over the next ten years. That’s it. That’s the tweet.
Trudeau made the pledge to plant two billion trees in his 2019 election platform but nearly two years later, only 0.4% of the target goal or 8.5 million trees have been planted.
“We’ll plant 2 billion trees over the next ten years. That’s it. That’s the tweet,” tweeted Trudeau on Sept. 27, 2019.
The Liberals earmarked a whopping $3.16 billion over ten years to get the job done.
“To fight climate change, protect forests and create good jobs, the government proposes to provide up to $3.16 billion, over ten years, starting in 2021-22, with $2 million in remaining amortization, to Natural Resources Canada to partner with provinces, territories, non-governmental organizations, Indigenous communities, municipalities, and others to plant 2 billion trees,” a 2020 economic update read.
According to records, $2,099,901 of the taxpayer funds went directly into the pockets of bureaucrats in the form of salaries while $743,362 was put towards “operations and maintenance.”
Meanwhile, management consultants received $208,943, $345,233 went towards technology and $39,833 was spent on public relations.
Despite the slow start, Wilkinson told the House of Commons natural resources committee on May 19, 2022 that the government was comfortable in saying that it would reach its goal by the intended date.
“The 30 million trees that we will have planted this year were the product of actually going out and finding excess trees,” said Wilkinson.
“We’ve been very public that the numbers are going to ramp over the next number of years. We are very comfortable that we’re on track to get to two billion trees.”
Horizon Ottawa, a progressive organization that lobbies for left-leaning municipal policies, is calling for a strong police response to upcoming freedom events in the nation’s capital – while also supporting the Defund the Police movement.
Freedom events are planned next week in downtown Ottawa for the arrival of Canadian Armed Forces Veteran James Topp and in celebration of Canada Day. Organizers are also planning events on weekends throughout the summer.
“It seems to me that their plan is always to sort of protect the parliamentary precinct, but they sort of just leave residential neighbourhoods there to dry,” Horizon Ottawa’s Sam Hersh told The Canadian Press.
“I want to see an acknowledgment of what this actually is from our city and from the relevant authorities: that this is a far-right movement, and that we should take it seriously. And they’re not welcome in our city.”
In a news release, Horizon quoted statements shared by anti-capitalist organization Community Solidarity Ottawa, and wrote that “‘freedom movement events are nothing more than a revival of February’s anti-democratic ‘Freedom Convoy’ occupation of Ottawa.”
Horizon Ottawa’s news release also said that the actions of freedom protesters “and the far-right politics they represent are a direct threat to our community and a broader threat to our safety and democracy.”
While Horizon Ottawa is urging authorities to crack down on attendees of the freedom events, they are also very critical of the police and support the Defund the Police movement.
During the February Freedom Convoy, the organization called for the defunding of Ottawa’s police force.
On Feb. 16, Horizon Ottawa issued a press release calling on the Ottawa Police Services Board to “immediately freeze the OPS budget at 2021 levels, and commit to detasking and defunding the Ottawa Police Service.”
The organization also held a press conference on Feb. 25 featuring activist Robin Browne, who called for the abolishing of police, citing the force’s failure to protect residents from the Freedom Convoy.
We need to move towards abolition of the police, with first step to be massive defunding
“It is time to start the process of abolishing the Ottawa police and by massively defunding them and starting… real community conversations about what systems we should fund and create to truly make us all safer,” said Browne at Horizon’s press conference.
Horizon Ottawa had also called for the reduction of Ottawa’s police budget in both 2020 and 2021, wanting the funding to instead go towards Ottawa Public Health and “real community safety.”
Here’s another thread about shifting money from Ottawa Police to Ottawa Public Health without raising taxes. This is from perspective of a Horizon Ottawa, an advocacy group that is decidedly in support of less money for police #ottcity#ottnewshttps://t.co/nEtQmZM57A
Additionally, the organization opposes School Resource Officer programs, claiming police “exposes children to human rights violations, a racistschool-to-prison pipeline, andgender-based violence.”
Freedom Convoy demonstrations came to an end after three weeks when police forcefully removed the peaceful protesters – following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act.
True North reached out to Horizon Ottawa for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
